The Relationship of Hypochondriasis Measures to Correlates of Personality in the Elderly

Posttraumatic stress disorder and general health problems following myocardial infarction (Post‐MI PTSD) among older patients: the role of personality

“…Among all predictors, given the largest b value, neuroticism was clearly the strongest predictor to PTSD symptoms and general health total. This finding was consistent with the general findings, described in the introduction, on the association between neuroticism and negative health outcomes among older people (Jerram and Coleman, 1999;Kling et al, 2003;Monopoli and Vaccaro, 2003;van Zelst et al, 2003;Terracciano and Costa, 2004;Wilson et al, 2004). The present finding also echoed the general findings in PTSD literature suggesting that neuroticism was a significant predictor to PTSD symptoms among victims of war (Davidson et al, 1987;Dalton et al, 1993;Schnurr et al, 1993;Hyer et al, 2003), natural disasters (Morgan et al, 1995), emergency rescue operations (McFarlane, 1988a(McFarlane, , 1988bWeiss et al, 1995), motor vehicle accidents (Holeva and Tarrier, 2001), burns (Fauerbach et al, 2000) and technological disasters (Carlier and Gersons, 1997;Chung et al, 2005).…”

“…In general, research shows that among older people, neuroticism is associated with a number of medical problems (e.g. tremor, shortness of breath, stroke, skin problems), negatively perceived health status, a high frequency of visits to the GP (Jerram and Coleman, 1999), smoking (Terracciano and Costa, 2004) and hypochondriasis (Monopoli and Vaccaro, 2003). Also, the risk of death for older people with high neuroticism is nearly double that of those with low neuroticism (Wilson et al, 2004).…”